Vitor Schietti: Maya Rainbow, Emotional Stretch
Unframed photograph (100 x 66cm, 2016)
What are the components of what we call “I”? A bunch of collected memories? The decisions we make or the ones that circumstances make for us? The emotions that flood the mind and the sensations these emotions produce? Or the sum of these and so many other elements, in a complex and dynamic kaleidoscope?
Any attempt to define self-identity will be incomplete. To delineate the limits of “I” is an illusory task. The Self can’t be framed as something solid, either complete or an entity. It approximates a liquid, in constant mutation.
As Buddhists say, if I am capable of observing my body, I am not my body. I observe my emotions, thus I am not my emotions. I observe my thoughts, thus I am not my thoughts. What am I? I am vacuity, illusion, anything bathed in Maya, but nevertheless I exist, I must be real! Reality is constructed by the eyes of the observer.
I use water as an element capable of pointing the shapes and colors of an illusion, combining long exposure photography, light modified by colored filters, strobe flashes and water spills.